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Coming to the Sound near you.. BP strikes again

Started 1 year ago by JoB
Latest reply from JoB

JoB
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The influence of big oil big money is everywhere...
and it's affecting Pugte Sound as well.

http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20100512/OPINION04/705129997/-1/rss05

This isn't the other guy's problem.

Posted 1 year ago #
Admiral935
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Thanks for the headsup.

Posted 1 year ago #
anonyme
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JoB, this is great information. Gee, wonder why the Seattle corporate media hasn't picked this up?

Posted 1 year ago #
JoB
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Gee, i wonder.

They probably just don't want to worry our pretty heads.

Posted 1 year ago #
dawsonct
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Not surprising the comments in the Herald trended towards the "don't blame the poor trans-national corporation" crowd.
--
I really enjoy the mindset that says 'others are polluting! Why do WE have to stop'?
Or those whose solution is 'if rape (of the planet, in this case) is inevitable, lay back and enjoy it'.
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Another blamed progressives for allowing China, who have a political/economic system that is the envy of corporatists Worldwide, to mess up our clean air.
HEY CONNEDSERVATIVE, who do you think pushed through clean-air legislation in this Nation in the first place!?

Posted 1 year ago #
MargL
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It was kind of interesting visiting the Seattle PUD booth at the Green Festival yesterday. The message I heard was "Keep your water and your pollution on your own property by planting conifers, using rain barrels, rain gardens, not washing your car at home, etc." Basically the message is "help us manage CSO by putting less water in the system."

Posted 1 year ago #
JoB
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We should all do what we can..

but that should include pressuring our state legislature to consider passing clean air/water legislation.

it isn't an either or thing here.
you can do both.. or a little of each.
every effort counts

Posted 1 year ago #
anonyme
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Has anyone else noticed that the news from the Gulf (of Mexico - we now have two gulf wars) has been nothing but rosy since BP was allowed to have total control of the media? How very interesting...(sarcasm)

Posted 1 year ago #
JoB
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One of the things that Amy Goodman said on Sunday in her talk at the Green Fair was the anyone who signs on for oil clean up also signs a contract stating they won't talk to the media and the media is being kept out of the more serious clean up areas.

When Amy was flown over the gulf by a coast guard representative.. his badge giving him access to clean up areas had a photo of him with a BP logo behind him...

This is NOT good.

Posted 1 year ago #
JoB
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The Indiana legislature gave BP the right to significantly increase pollution in Lake Michigan in exchange for 80 jobs...

Isn't it amazing what money can buy?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/services/chi-pollute_15jul15,0,823234.story

I remember when you couldn't swim in our rivers... then we cleaned them up and for a brief time you could not only swim.. but they supported life too.

Posted 1 year ago #
JanS
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we all are quite disgusted, saddened, emotional about what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico, and, yes, angry, too. Thinking of boycotting all things BP? Consider this, as you consider that:

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/06/07/boycott-bp.html

what's that old saying - 'We have met the enemy and he is us"? As you type a response, remember that your fingers are touching plastic, that your hand is on a mouse made of plastic, that your monitor...yep, plastic. And ask yourself if it has a BP on it...or if it's something that you can live without.

This whole damned thing is a great wake up call for all of us; I'm the first one to say "Guilty as charged". My car hasn't functioned in about a year, and I suppose I should feel good about that, but I miss it so, and I do use Zipcar. Guilty, guilty, guilty. :(

Posted 1 year ago #
christopherboffoli
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Right on JanS! Well said. It is child's play to vilify a big faceless corporation. But I wonder how many people have significantly altered their petroleum consumption since this accident happened. I'd guess that few have and that those people I see lined up in at the Drive-thru Stabrucks, idling in their cars while they wait for their Frappucinos, are the same folks who are ridiculously talking about boycotting BP.

I think of the times I have seen coverage here in the WSB about where to find the cheapest gasoline. More than 70% of the petroleum that comes out of the ground for US consumption goes to transportation. Well if cheap gas is what everyone thinks they're entitled to then it's time to man up and factor in the destruction of our pristine habitats that has come as a result of OUR appetite for black gold.

If we didn't have a voracious thirst for it BP wouldn't have an incentive to pull it out of the ground.

Posted 1 year ago #
JanS
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now, while I said all that above, I'm absolutely horrified that they didn't have a plan for " that could never happen". Never say never. And..if drilling should continue, a requirement is that a relief well be dug at the same time as the main one. I am horrified that BP is coming across as inept. This is their business, and they should be able to handle the worst case scenario. I also notice that no one seems to be pissed at Halliburton or Transocean...let's see...a defective rig, too many leaders, and blame to go around aplenty for it happening. And somewhere along the line, neatly swept under the rug by BP, etc., is the death of 11 men who died horrific deaths in the fire the first day.And Tony Hayward wants his life back? Give me a break! I'd like to see him assigned to clean-up for the next year!

So don't get me wrong...I'm not defending BP at all.

Posted 1 year ago #
christopherboffoli
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I'm not trying to defend BP either but sometimes accidents happen and nothing in life is 100% fail-safe and risk-free. No one seems to have any interest at all in the incredibly tricky process of drilling through the ocean floor more than a mile below sea level. We just want our cheap gas so we can drive big cars everywhere we want. But then when something like this happens, everyone is an expert...demanding that they turn it off in five minutes with a magic switch. And of course, everyone from corporate giants to politicians gets cast automatically as somewhere on a scale of incompetent to corrupt.

The truth is that everyone likes to eat the sausage but no one wants to go in the back of the house and see how it is made. BP wouldn't even be there in the Gulf if we didn't make it profitable for them to be. Even on good days, when thousands of barrels of oil aren't gushing into the ocean, the pursuit and harvest of fossil fuels damages our wildlife and ecosystems, probably irreparably. And it often also damages lives of the people who aren't lucky enough to be Americans. It takes a big, dramatic events like this until people care.

The longer we continue playing this game of blaming the usual suspects, the longer we avoid responsibility for our own role in this mess. We make small decisions every day in our own lives that are directly related to that undersea gusher in the Gulf. We have no business being "shocked- shocked" when something like this happens. I have absolutely no qualms about being truthful with myself in saying that the oil is on my hands too.

Posted 1 year ago #
JoB
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i think you are missing the point if you focus on vilifying the corporation.

The selling off of exemptions to the clean water act by BP is making the news right now because of the oil spill.. but environmental exemptions are widespread over several industries using loopholes meant to protect local private land use and they are happening in a legislature very close to you.

Would you knowingly eat fish caught in the Duwamish right now? Would you swim there?

I wouldn't. Yet there is no real reason with the laws currently in place that the Duwamish should be so dangerously polluted.

The Duwamish empties into Elliot Bay and the idea that it is a big enough bathtub scoured daily by ocean tides so it has no effect is just one of those industry myths brought to you by the PR departments of the companies that pollute the bay and our own government to cover up the damage they are knowingly doing.

It is perfectly possible for industry and our environment to co-exist peacefully... we proved that when we cleaned up our rivers and lakes... but not when polluting the environment is only seen as an enhancement to the bottom line and a loophole to exploit.

This does not have to business as usual.

We have sold off our tax benefits to keep jobs and our governments have sold off our environment to keep jobs. We dont' have much left to sell to enhance the bottom line of US industry and still those jobs keep disappearing like yesterday's news.

Do you think there might be something wrong with this picture?

Posted 1 year ago #
dawsonct
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Should have listened to Jimmy Carter, I guess.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carter/filmmore/ps_crisis.html

They say the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago (in this case thirty), the next best time is right now.
We had a chance as a Nation to be well ahead of the rest of the World by now, to be the leaders.
Instead, we elected three Republican representatives of the carbon-energy industry who have set us back half a century, and now these are the results; pursuing fossilized energy in places that are difficult to reach and dangerous to drill, because all the easy oil is GONE.
---
It took us eight years to get to the moon. One time, Americans saw a problem and solved it.
Thirty+ years of Jude Wanniski, Grover Norquist, Arthur Laffer Republicanism has destroyed our Nation.
I remembered this speech for the energy policy it proposed, but had forgotten the other themes President Carter touched on, and the prescience of this paragraph:

"We are at a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One is a path I've warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure."

And that is where we are now.

Posted 1 year ago #
andrea
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awesome quote dawson.

Posted 1 year ago #
JoB
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i remember that speech...
been planting trees furiously since then :)

we are reaping what we have sown... and it's not quite what some of us thought they were buying...

our media .. a media that at least for a while was a pretty efficient information source... is now nothing more than another advertising tool selling you on why we should let big international corporations steal us blind and leave the resulting mess for us to clean up.

There is a mess. it is immense. and it is not limited to the gulf.

Posted 1 year ago #